Reporting Haiyan: the view from the newsroom

Rob SharpUpdated
Sat 14 Dec 2013, 7:47 AM AEDT

Gallery

Typhoon Haiyan slams Philippines

The enormity of the tragedy becomes very real when you return home from work and see the... news and see the many tens thousands of people – our neighbours – desperate for help after suddenly and very cruelly losing everything.

It's not easy to get a sense of just how powerful a typhoon, cyclone or tornado will be.Often, it's a case of waiting until they hit before we get a full understanding of what's taking place.

But in the early hours of November 8, Typhoon Haiyan, made me a little nervous - particularly when the forecasters started adding the word 'super' to the storm's title.

I remember sitting in the newsroom with my online colleague Scott Longmuir and asking him what the difference was between a typhoon and a super typhoon

Scott quickly informed me that a super typhoon has twice the wind speed of the point where a storm becomes a typhoon.

Shortly after, the phone rang. It was one our freelance journalists calling me from the Philippines to inform us that Super Typhoon Haiyan had landed.

The Super Storm

There were no wire alerts from the news agencies and very little activity on Twitter; after all it was very early in the morning Philippines time.

Little did we know, this was the one that was going to be the big one - the one that would wreak so much havoc and misery, destroying the lives of millions of people - and leaving thousands dead. The story was unfolding.

Asia Pacific host Sen Lam was on air and he was speaking to the head of the Philippines Red Cross, Gwendolyn Pang.

"Even people in evacuation centres - we are not quite sure if they're safe because the wind is very strong," she said.

Scott and I knew this was it. A massive storm was in our patch. Our job was to inform and it was up to us.

Scott worked on the online version of the story for Australia Network, Radio Australia and the wider ABC.

To this day, it remains the most viewed story online on Australia Network.

Radio Australia’s biggest reach is in Asia and the Pacific and we’d already been tracking Haiyan as it charged through Palau.

But as it made landfall in the Philippines, there was still very little to go on initially, bar the frightening comments being convoyed by Gwendolyn Pang on Asia Pacific.

She kept mentioning Tacloban – and we got a sense from her interview this is where all hell was breaking loose.

Scott Longmuir quickly showed me a before and after shot of Tacloban as Twitter was finally abuzz with pictures.

The images were heartbreaking – it looked like everything was lost.

I guess you don’t really get a sense of how big a story is when it’s developing and unfolding before your eyes.

But the enormity of the tragedy becomes very real when you return home from work and see the 7pm news and see the many tens thousands of people – our neighbours – desperate for help after suddenly and very cruelly losing everything.